How to Beat the Rising Cost of Compliance

The cost of compliance is but a fraction of the cost of remediation in a post Sun Edison industry.

Timely financial reporting is an incredibly time-consuming process. Finance teams often spend several weeks of the 261 work days year preparing clear and concise financial reports. In addition, a quick turnaround is an incredibly important part of the financial reporting process. Bottlenecks in the reporting process can be any finance team’s worst nightmare, especially for a sector as competitive as renewable energy. As companies seek to build new projects, obtain pricing information and prepare documents for investment committees or government compliance, time is lost analyzing existing assets or focusing on growth.

For any CFO or financial team an Investment Lifecycle Management (ILM) system can be incredibly helpful to reducing these time constraints by,

Decreasing time spent on generating reports for audits or tracking assumption changes;

Increasing productivity of project finance and save time auditing;

Keeping project pricing consistent; and,

Controlling financing and pricing models across all projects.

This type of solution assists any CFO or finance team with reporting financial information in a timelier manner while saving resources for more important areas like growth and business development. With this kind of real-time speed, portion risk assessment is easier to identify enabling quick action to mitigate foreseen issues.

If you still don’t believe in the benefits of an ILM, just ask Building Energy S.p.A. This multinational company is an independent power producer headquartered in Milan, Italy, that operates power plants all over the world. It invests and develops energy projects that span multiple countries, programs and technologies. For Building Energy, the investment and development process had become too complex and complicated. The company sought a solution to deliver project and portfolio discipline, transparency and overall business intelligence. They turned to Mercatus Energy Investment Lifecycle Management (ILM) to unlock its investments. The net result was a step-change in the management of its pipeline and an acceleration of the quality and speed of its investment decisions making.

Fly across the Atlantic and you will hear a similar story from GE Solar, a division of GE Current and a world leader in power generation. GE solar used Mercatus Energy Investment Lifecycle Management (ILM) solution to help it scale project efficiently. As the deals started to come in, GE Solar discovered the ﬂexibility of the solution it had chosen. GE Solar found all its data accessible in one spot and began to gain clarity on the risk factors of each investment decision, speeding up decision making. Instead of focusing on financial reporting GE Solar’s finance team was able to focus on new projects and growth. Mercatus Energy ILM is now the tool that allows GE Solar to take investments from concept to reality at unprecedented speed.

As the renewable energy industry continues to grow, compliance regulations and expectations will grow stricter. Having these regulations in place will help it grow into a mature asset class, giving it the credibility and capital it needs to succeed. While meeting these requirements is often difficult and costly, systems like Mercatus Energy ILM are cost effective way to build a more efficient finance departments; just ask GE Solar or Building Energy. Because in the end, the cost of what it takes to maintain compliance is but a small fraction of what the actual cost of remediation will be as you manage your way back to compliance.